Access to Information at Virginia Tech

I haven’t been following open access developments in the UK, but apparently publishers are weakening the proposed policy there. I haven’t seen their decision tree, but Mike Taylor proposes one that should work globally. While authors are more likely to follow the publisher’s guidelines on archiving (if that), Taylor does have a point about manuscript ownership. Most authors won’t be so assertive, though I don’t know of any cases of publishers asking for the material to be taken down.

Graduate students apparently don’t know much about copyright for their ETDs, and part of the cause may be bad information from their universities, according to the latest post on Free US ETDs. An upcoming Part 2 will offer guidance on providing better copyright information for ETDs.

Many of you will remember Microsoft’s Jon Udell from his visit to Virginia Tech a couple of years ago as Distinguished Innovator in Residence. He’s now working with communities in the Hampton Roads area on a community calendar, which will use iCalendar, an open standard. It’ll be interesting to see the results.